Intellectual Property (IP): The Importance of Intellectual Property for Knorr-Bremse

Protection Against Imitation: In an increasingly fast-paced and highly competitive business environment, it is essential for us to protect our ideas, inventions, and know-how. The Corporate IP department plays a key role in this by raising awareness and supporting business units worldwide in safeguarding innovations. Together with the respective units, Corporate IP establishes the foundation for strategically protecting products as well as potential design-around solutions, enabling us to effectively combat imitations and the unauthorized use of our technologies and innovations. This allows us to defend our innovations in the marketplace and preserve their uniqueness.

Investment Incentives and Promotion of Innovation: Filing patents or registering designs enables us to invest in research and development and to capitalize on these investments as a source of competitive differentiation. This not only supports the continuous development of future-ready and pioneering products and services for the mobility industry, but also strengthens our competitiveness in a global market.

Value Creation for the Company: Well-protected intellectual property constitutes a significant part of our corporate value. IP rights can substantially increase a company's value, particularly in industries where innovation provides a decisive competitive advantage. They make Knorr-Bremse more attractive to customers, investors, partners, and other stakeholders, while strengthening the company’s long-term stability and resilience.

Reputation and Trust: Protecting intellectual property underscores our commitment to quality, integrity, and innovation. Trademark protection, in particular, enables customers and business partners to clearly identify our products as genuine Knorr-Bremse originals. At the same time, potential counterfeit products can be identified, pursued, and prevented as trademark infringements. This helps strengthen stakeholder trust in our products and services and supports the long-term reputation of the company.

Protecting Intellectual Property: The Role of Corporate IP

The Corporate IP department covers a wide range of activities related to intellectual property, all aimed at maximizing the value and protection of the company’s intangible assets. By protecting, managing, and strategically leveraging the company’s IP rights, Corporate IP helps safeguard Knorr-Bremse’s competitiveness and long-term success. Its key responsibilities include:

Patent Protection: How Do Patents Protect Knorr-Bremse’s Innovations?

A technical idea may sometimes appear simple at first glance. However, in most cases, a new invention is the result of complex considerations, extensive testing and refinement, numerous coordination efforts, and a significant investment of time. In short, it requires a great deal of effort, know-how, and cost.

To ensure the protection of completed development results, patents provide protection for inventions against potential copies. A patent therefore protects a company’s technical innovations. It grants the owner the exclusive right to use, sell, license, or otherwise commercialize the invention. This exclusive right enables the company, on the one hand, to protect its developments against imitators or counterfeiters and, on the other hand, to secure a monopoly position in the market for the patented technology or patented product.

Trademark Protection: An Important Mark of Recognition and Quality

Trademark protection is essential to business success. Trademarks protect company names, logos, and other distinctive identifiers of a company and its products. They ensure that customers and business partners can clearly recognize the origin of our products, associate them with Knorr-Bremse, and trust in their quality. By protecting a trademark, we secure exclusive rights and prevent competitors from benefiting from its reputation. This helps maintain a unique corporate identity. In addition, trademark protection provides an important tool in the fight against product piracy.

The Knorr-Bremse logo is protected as a trademark. Customers and business partners around the world associate it with our brand values, which create trust in our products:

• Highest reliability of our safety-critical systems ("reliable")
• Forward-looking innovations ("innovative")
• Market-leading technologies ("leading")

Combating Product Piracy

Despite the high technical complexity of our product portfolio, we are repeatedly confronted with third parties imitating our products and distributing them in markets that are relevant to us. This is particularly critical because counterfeit versions of our products, nearly all of which are safety-relevant in the transportation of people and goods, can, in the worst case, pose a serious risk to road and rail users. Counterfeit braking systems, for example, whether installed in trucks or trains, often do not meet the stringent safety requirements of tested original parts and can cause serious accidents on railways and roads. For this reason, combating product piracy is of exceptionally high importance to us, not only because of the significant financial damage it can cause. Above all, safety and our commitment to the highest quality standards play a decisive role in protecting our products.

What risks supposedly cheaper products from the counterfeit and grey market can entail is explained in the article "The dangers behind apparent bargains" in Bremspunkt, the customer magazine of the Commercial Vehicle Systems division (p. 10).

How do we take action against counterfeit or imitation Knorr-Bremse products? If we receive indications of potential product counterfeiting, our established review and legal assessment processes are initiated. With a team of specialized and experienced attorneys and patent lawyers, we take consistent action against the various legal infringements and pursue a multi-track approach. Our intellectual property rights play a central role in this: the products concerned frequently infringe existing patents because they incorporate protected technical features, or they violate our trademark rights, for example through the unauthorized use of the Knorr-Bremse logo or other protected trademarks of the company.

Corporate IP Firmly Embedded in the Corporate Strategy

Intellectual property is an essential part of our corporate strategy and is of great importance to the company. The Corporate IP function is organizationally divided into three regions: Europe, North America, and Asia. In each region, a dedicated team of specialists is responsible for providing patent and trademark support to the two divisions, Rail and Commercial Vehicle Systems. Key areas of focus include combating product piracy and managing inventor compensation in the respective countries. It is important to us to reward inventions fairly through compensation that goes well beyond statutory requirements.

Our business success and long-standing technology leadership within the industry are based on the innovative product portfolios of both divisions.

To strengthen our capabilities in the field of intellectual property and to protect and strategically leverage our trademarks and patents in the best possible way, we established a dedicated company for our IP rights. KB Intellectual Property GmbH & Co. KG ensures that all intellectual property rights are managed, licensed, and defended against imitation in the best possible way. This helps minimize legal risks. In addition, centralized IP management can increase value creation by marketing intellectual property rights in a targeted manner and using them for new business opportunities. In this way, our company’s intellectual property remains well organized, secure, and profitable.

In the future, Knorr-Bremse will continue to work every day on pioneering product solutions for safe, efficient, and climate-friendly transportation, which we protect in the best possible way for the benefit of our stakeholders.